Dearest friends and family, Santiago, Chile
I greet you from my second favorite perch on a bus, seat #4 of a double decker-- top floor, right window. My first favorite seat is at the elbow of the driver, but that only happens on short trips in less developed countries where every inch of butt space is a dollar sign. We haven’t left the station yet and down below I watch a mad house of people waiting for a bus, waiting for someone to get off a bus or waiting for someone to drop a coin in their tin cup. It’s summer vacation for all of southern South America, which makes for swarms of people trying to get from one place to another.
[Warning: Do not get a massage in Cuba]
I’m off to a smaller town, Linares, to stay in the home of a woman I hardly know. She was my roommate at the spirituality retreat I talked about last logue. I function totally on intuition with these sorts of invitations While I’ve had some challenging companions, my good judgment has never put me in a dangerous predicament. The past three days I have stayed in a total bachelor’s pad in Santiago complete with scum in the tub, an inch of dust covering the dining room table and so many dishes on the couch you can’t sit down. Sweetheart of a guy, though, so I’m not complaining, just describing.
[Warning: Do not get a massage in Cuba]
As for the trip to Cuba:
Sign up!! Sign up!! Sign up!! Not for my job security, but so you don’t miss out on a life changing experience. As you know, I’ve traveled all over the Spanish speaking world and Cuba is ranking amongst the top three countries on my list. To sum up why: relationships are more important than stuff. The average Cuban has so little when it comes to material possessions, but they seem to act from a baseline of joy. They are passionate about living and so warm and welcoming to visitors. Too, they are loyal to the gifts they were born with and to creative expression. We (Americans) tend to view the Cuban government in a negative light, but one thing it does that our government and education system fails to do is support the arts. Dancing, painting, singing, acting, ect are all recognized profession with a salary just like a doctor or dentist or lawyer. It’s not a high paying salary, but neither are the others I mention. I met two doctors who run a restaurant on the side to support their families. The materials artists need, like paint, guitar strings, etc ,however, are hard to come by. Those are amongst the items we take on our trips to donate.
Our two weeks of training were intense and exhausting, but by the second day into it I knew I had found my dream job. Three years ago I took a leap of faith and quit teaching without having another source of income awaiting me. I didn’t know exactly what I wanted to do other than something that allowed me to use my innate gifts and acquired skills while at the same time help people. Tour operating in Cuba offers all of that—speaking Spanish, translating, organizing, facilitating, entertaining, leading, sniffing out adventure, being kind to people, and much more. In a nutshell, I am a fun provider, in both ways you could take that (a person who makes sure others have fun and/or a person who is fun while providing an experience).Never, ever have I been so excited about a job. Too, I am actually not an employee of any company, but rather a private contractor, which means I work when I want to.
There are a zillion magic moments I could share with you from my trip, but I’m going to limit it to two. Number one: We went to a coconut farm where a 91-year-old man still scales 30 ft high palm trees in under 20 seconds to harvest coconuts.
I asked him what his secret to longevity is and he answered to live in harmony with Nature, keep peaceful relations with your family and do what you love. Damn. What percentage of the population lives like that? It made me think of Pop, who as you know passed this summer at age 90. He wasn’t scaling any trees, but he did live out those three principles.
Second, we went into a community that went from being a wealthy section of town to a junked up slum in disrepair. A few years ago one man took it upon himself to turn the place around. He rallied the neighbors, gathered funds, bought an abandoned water tank from the government and turned it into an artists’ community. Now they take kids at risk off the streets and give them a place to paint, sing, dance and graffiti buildings and walls with positive messages of peace, love, hope and inspiration. Here’s the kicker: the center is made out of 100% recycled junk they collected off the streets. When they cleaned up the neighborhood they used the “trash” as building materials.
That within itself is enough to inspire the hell out of you, but what sent me over the edge was a concert a group of youngsters preformed for us on the roof of the water tank. They opened the show with such an exact cover of the 80’s song “Your Kiss Is On My List” that if you closed your eyes and just listened you would swear Hall and Oats had reincarnated on the stage. And you know how they learned that song and all the other American 80’s top 40 hits they played? Listening to a contraband frequency on a rigged up radio they made. Those songs are how they learned English! Wait…it gets even better! The lead guitar player and singer was born with only half of his right arm. Despite that, he taught himself to play the guitar using a prostisis his mom made for him out of a broken leather sandal and scrap metal! The kid had a constant smile on his face that spread through the crowd like a cold germ through a kindergarten class. Think about all the things that were against him: missing half an arm, had to learn to play left-handed, impoverished upbringing ….and he let none of that stop him from developing his talent. I left there thinking I have got absolutely NO EXUSE for not becoming whatever I want to be.
Well, this travelogue is approaching 2,000 words, so I’m going to leave you with this edition’s amusing anecdote:
Why You Should Not Get a Massage in Cuba
My nomad lifestyle is killing my back. Two overloaded backpacks and several nine-hour flights have wadded my shoulder and neck muscles into knots big as a baseball. I haven’t mentioned yet that I have gone from living in a tent to sleeping in 5 Star accommodations (the participants on my trips are mostly wealthy retired professionals). The hotels we stay in all have a spa, so one night I got desperate for pain relief and made an appointment for a massage. The receptionist sent me up to one of the rooms on the third floor, which I thought strange since they have a sauna area, but it was late, so I figured they had to move the location. When I get there, the door was locked and no one answered my knock. Finally a harried woman scrawnier than me shows up wearing a WW II nurse’s dress and apologizes profusely for being late. She is carrying a plate of food in one hand and a key in the other. When the door swings open I see a t.v., a single bed, a hospital gurney and cabinets full of medicine.
“Is this the massage room?,” I asked.
“No, it’s the hotel clinic, but it doesn’t matter. We can do it here.”
Well, it mattered to me because I wanted ambiance, but I didn’t say anything. She walks in, turns on the t.v. and tells me to get undressed and lay face down on the gurney. I follow her instructions and try my best to get comfortable on a mattress about as thick as a Depends. In the meantime, she dials her boyfriend and goes off to have a few bits of her dinner. I work on positioning the hand towel she has left in lieu of a sheet so it covers the essentials to prove my momma raised me with at least the minimal amount of modesty a girl should have.
For the next twenty minutes I endured what I would call a “spit bath” massage. It’s not that she actually spat on me, but her “strokes” reminded me of how my mother used to wet a Kleenex with her saliva and then dab-rub dried chocolate ice cream off my face. I didn’t like it when Mom didn’t it and I liked it even less coming from Nurse Wratched. When I told her the poking technique wasn’t helping, she balled her hand up into a fist and began frothing her knuckles across my back until she exfoliated my skin down to the capillaries. Then she started grabbing hunks of muscle as if they were the edges of a dough ball she was kneading into a loaf of bread. Every time she yanked up the hospital gurney creaked like a set of stairs in a haunted house. Great, I thought, this thing is going to collapse and give me whiplash on top of what already hurts me. Of course, her pinch-hitter techniques were doing nothing to loosen up the knots, so then she busts out some sort of gel that smelled like gasoline and started working that into the areas she had just rubbed raw. That pushed me over the edge. I told her not having a hole in the bed for my face was crooking up my neck worse (which was true) and we’d better stop.
For the next several days the pain worsened, so when we got to Habana and checked into the nicest hotel yet, I thought I’d give a massage another try. Bad decision. It’s clear to me now that there are no massage therapy schools in Cuba. My therapist this time, Wonder Wanda, at least dressed like a masseuse, kinda. And the room she took me to had a kinda massage table, minus a face cradle. All of these signs were misleading, though. She was brutal. She started by clasping one of her hands over the other and performing Cardio Pulmonary Resuscitation on my spine from my neck to my coccxis. Then she walked around the table yanking all of my extremities to their extreme and trying to flap a wave down them as if they were a wet noodle. Arms and legs done, she went for my head. She lifted it up off the table and tossed it between her hands like a hot potato. In response to my obvious resistance she says, “Relax, Baby.”
Yeah, Right.
Halfway through she asks me to sit up straight, schooch to the back of the table and put my hands on top of my head as if I’m being arrested. Then she comes up behind me, weaves her arms up through the triangles mine have made and laces her fingers around the back of my neck. I am buck naked, mind you, so when she pulls my bare back up against her robust belly and breasts, I get distracted from my treatment. The free shot we were both getting of my intimates in the mirror in front of us had my attention as well. The purpose of this posture I realized was to rip my hamstrings in half. That’s what it felt like when she doubled me forward at the waist like a plastic straw and let all of her volumpsousness rest on my back.
“This hurts,” I said.
“If it don’t hurt, Honey, it ain’t helping” she responds. “Take a deep breath.”
Without warning she jerks my whole body up off the table while we are still in this cuff-n-stuff, Sumo wrestler position. I swear I felt like a plucked turkey under arrest and hung by its wings to dangle vertically over the Thanksgiving table. I needed someone to say grace.
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I am now at my new friend’s house and it is an absolute paradise—pool, luscious gardens, bird calls all around, sweet pair of German Sheppards, incredible house (she is an architect and designed it) and a feeling of welcome that bursts my heart with love. My openness to flow with the whims of the Universe does it again! I’ve 18 more days of these lovely surprises.
Upcoming: Feb 13 I leave Chile for Miami to take my first group to Cuba. I’m going to brag a moment and say of the 13 trainees on our trip I am the only one who isn’t doing a ride-along before going solo. That’s what happens when you do what you love!
Speaking of love…much from me to you,
G
